


In the Land of Bounty

by Good_Evening



Category: Vampire Knight
Genre: Affairs, Betrayal, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, Depression, Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, Familial Abuse, Gore, M/M, Non Consensual, Partner Betrayal, Rape, Sexual Abuse, Violence, Vore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Evening/pseuds/Good_Evening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Ridou's death, purpose seems to run dry and adulthood isn't as fulfilling as anyone had hoped. Still hunting vampires, Zero has Kaname's occasional assistance on longer expeditions. Resentful of Yuuki's marriage and her husband, at every turn, Zero finds himself culling morbid enjoyment from Kaname's suffering. The men's relationship grows stronger as time wears on, but the hatred never shrinks, regardless of new complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Land of Bounty

**Author's Note:**

> *CAUTION!*
> 
> Re-titled from an old account on FF.net: "The Chases of Blood Brothers." That is honestly the worst title I have ever puked out onto a keyboard. Glad I stopped drinking.
> 
> Is this still on hiatus? If you call being utterly, irrevocably dead a "hiatus," then, sure. Wishful thinking. Why not.
> 
> Also, I hate pretty much all of the characters for sundry reasons, but particularly Kaname. Do I know why? Look at that aloof glare. Does it not infuriate you? To that purpose, I must admit, every VK story I've ever written has simply been an attempt to express my disdain for Kaname. After so many years of this, now I don't care, but this particular story was written when the hatred was running highest, so if you're ready for gore, heartbreak, rape, and manipulation, you are my kind of person, and I would like to buy you a drink.
> 
> Enjoy.

Zero looked over at Kaname tiredly, his eyes moving sluggishly, colours indiscernible behind a curtain of multi-coloured dots. The man’s eyelashes twitched in REM, light lines beneath them revealing how tired he really was. Over the past few months, his schedule had been hectic with riot after riot; reclaiming his power as king was proving to be a hard, dirty fight, and every mud-slinging senator he’d come into contact with, he’d gunned down in his, or Zero’s, ways. Needless to say, his stream of opponents had lightly dwindled because of the alleged ‘disappearances’. As his friend had put one morning after a hot shower, _“’Disappearing has nothing to do with it. Everybody up in the fucking sticks knows where they are.”_ As a pacifist, Kaien had discouraged their nightly, though often daily attempts at removing their obstacles, but as a hunter and caring guardian, gave them the tips on new tech and the old burial sites. Though, often enough, a stack of green was just as inveigling. That or a threat, and they handled threats very well, if not on a _Godfather_ level, a fact in which Kaien revelled.

 

But as the day wore on and their grim business was slowly finished, the dread of the coming days bit at them, and the amount of blood on their hands saturated their skin, turning their palms a lucid, congealing crimson visible only on the more difficult days. Through their trials, they had come to points at which they thought themselves unfit to be near Yuki, and certainly forbade themselves from touching her, so a light phone call from halfway around the world every two days or so often fought off their urge to rush home and baby her again. Kaname was a ruthless and charming lobbyist: an irresistible force with a gloomy, scrubby youth at his side as a modest show of his ‘friendly relations’ with the modern [hu]man. Each new base foreshadowed unfamiliar challenges, and their newfound acceptance of each other sprung from a bizarre and sometimes gruesome kinship, every second they spent together fuelling it through witty talk, grim, straightforward analyses, and an almost suicidal bravery and sense of protection. Several occasions set the stage for assassination, one or the other rushing in to back his ‘bro’. Four years at it and all they’d gained were some bad scars and an unheard-of tolerance for hard liquor. Disturbingly enough, even though Kaname could heal from anything, at the side of his head had grown a thin streak of white. No matter how many times he’d tried to rip it out, its mesmerizing translucence continued to allude to his suffering, weeks at a time becoming unbearable as he reached a level of maturity and knowledge no man his age should have gotten his gritty fingers on.

 

Zero’s eyes had lost the shimmer of his more meaningful youth, shedding the amethyst chrysalis for a deep violet, a metallic sheen of toxic mercury suggesting his apathy toward horror; his growing savage love of dissonance and the hot, bloated barrel of a smoking gun. Kaname, personally, shivered at the sensation of shorn flesh growing dry on his fingernails, and the sudden evaporation of his history as his instinctual desire for conquer and the illustrious ‘chase’ overrode whatever morals hadn’t yet dripped off of him. More often than not, they’d slough their scars and torment on someone else; Zero would press that round, calescent barrel into the already blistering flesh of his target, the woven metal like magma on their newly branded skin, a smoking design left emblazoned on the stomach or neck like a demonic vigil on cracked leather. Sometimes the putrid rind simply slipped off, in that case calling for a brief, uninterested shrug, followed by a firm, slow walk away, or the introduction of a much more painful side of life, via Kaname’s own increasingly practiced skills. The inebriation they faced from the wall of fear and scents of blood forced them to drunkenly embark, and the poor son of a bitch left quaking in their path might run for his life or lay there like a stone.

 

But now, it was quiet, and as Zero continued to watch his companion sleep in their two-person bag, he noticed how pronounced the streak had become, and surveyed it with a careful, humane doubt that left him barren of his darker inhibitions and usual disinterested demeanour. He had become frightened for this man, having been saved by him, and, on occasion, saving. Never had he become so attached to someone on such a strange level; walk inside a mausoleum and down through the catacombs, and you might find where they would _vacation_ , at this point; a pleasant, pre-dead package for a change. Their bloody talent alone set them apart from everyone else, not taking into account the fact that they were the other’s predator, and for their own sake pretty much past the fighting point, bickering not having left the picture just for the bitter fun of it.

 

Long had they been austere in the eyes of the vampire community; widely distrusted by both it and the Hunter’s Association. Altogether, they were regarded as a mismatch made in heaven for their brutality and sparking chemistry, along the road having taken on several characteristics Yuki, at this point, would never have permitted in her husband or friend.  And Zero could smell on Kaname’s and his breaths the no longer isolated product of the wealth of their practised skill in being unconcerned with the lives of the lemmings and sparse foxes they weekly gutted. Huddled in the scrub of some godforsaken tundra on their latest trail, the vein-constricting glamour of hard alcohol had been hard to pass up. In the end, the fire they’d tried so hard to keep going in their intoxicated resolve to quell the frostbite teasing their toes had died quickly without proper tending, their inseparable mass a mesh of heavily scarred tan and liquid porcelain. Kaname’s pressured veins bulged fluidly against his skin as his body struggled to keep them warm, the pulsing rivets turning pearl into opal, and their bodies into a recognisable bundle of flesh and an eager, bloodthirsty desire to live.

 

Zero squirmed on their mat, pushing his body closer to his companion’s, shivering in his thermal underwear against the onslaught of an Arctic chill. Kaname’s body acted like a furnace positively blazing with heat. They were literally at the end of the road, high on the Dalton and stopped outside of Deadhorse. The last days of September seeped away to reveal lessening light and truly Alaskan temperatures, and even Kaname’s powers couldn’t match up against the glamorous show the coming winter seemed intent on putting up.

 

He wiggled as the hunter twined their legs, feeling smothered not only by the body beside him, but the immense amount of heat that was pouring out of him. He was capable of doing amazing things, but it was more than struggle to keep such a high core temperature, especially when a purple-eyed parasite was snuggling uncommonly close, the ice surrounding them leeching off of their wavering heat. Not only was he exhausted from this gentleman’s courtesy, but he had far underestimated the strength of the alcohol he’d brought, and so his blood boiled thinly beneath the frantically charged surface of his skin, the heat in his face sweltering to such the extent that he removed himself from Zero’s grasp, unfortunately ultimately awaking the ‘sleeping’ man.

 

“What are you doing?” He asked hoarsely, his voice a dirty croak as the cold seemed to reach even his tangled vocal chords. Kaname, naked, looked behind him at his groggy counterpart, and sullenly slurred,

 

“M’too hot; need a break. T’seconds, ‘kay?” Zero stared at him as his body slowly leaned back and forth, the blood so incredibly thinned, the younger wondered how it was possible the man could keep any temperature.

 

“I’ll join you. Not tired, anyway,” he scrambled, tongue loose and swollen dryly in his mouth, for a pair of filthy socks to don his quickly cooling feet. Kaname walked out into a dead night, the stones he stepped on steaming under his unearthly heat. The lichen that had encroached upon the rocks sizzled and contracted from its voluptuous quantity when he neared, becoming destitute piles of scorched, dry weed. Zero fumbled with his clothing and tripped out of the tent to see the whole of his companion, the jutting bones refracting light and turning that celestial body into a true pearl, the gleam of moonlight almost overkill in trying to assist in his prefabricated, divine perfection. His hair was spotted with small droplets of water, the thicker sweat causing his body to shimmer more-so. Zero stood a few appreciative feet behind the nude man, transfixed by the rare sight of the complete, sylphlike form, stripped and lovely in a sense intimated by his soft, lonesome appearance in the daunting vastness of the sunless tundra. The sight was ineffably illuminating.

 

He began walking from their site, treading toward mountains invisible in the dark horizon, his head thrumming with an immeasurable heat, lips dry and eyes watering from the sweat that wet his onyx brow. Unperturbed by the familiar man so closely inspecting him in his nakedness, he remained at a steady pace, skin hugging his hips and cheekbones in a worrisomely tight fashion. His breaths were like columns of steam in the cold, locomotive body moving effortlessly until the fever grew to a hazardous level, and his vision became clouded by those same dots that had obscured Zero’s. They shifted as he moved his eyes and their colour intensified thrillingly, the surrounding light growing faint as Zero came to his side, unknowledgeable of his precarious temperature. Nocturnally, they had left the tent in search of absolutely nothing, a moment that occurred only once in a great while, and often celebrated with heavy drinking, and occasionally, stronger stuffs.

 

“Zero,” Kaname said in dreamy, half-inquiry. He gazed at the nightscape in climactic exhaustion, apathy channelling lethargically through overburdened veins. As his eyes grew quieter of his previous rage, his body suddenly stilled and tensed, then a scintillating aureole grew in his irises, brightening them to the strange scarlet a regrettable, but explicable, many had known. The umbrageous scene was witness to a vindicating act of dehumanisation, as in seconds, Kaname leapt from Zero’s side and bowled over the cold plain, within a moment his companion shadowed him. A lattice of coarse shrubs confined what he knew to be a more terrifying scene than that of their more surreal cases, Kaname’s uncharacteristically inelegant bacchanalia further discomposing his state. A brief shriek, followed in suit by a grisly cracking sound, pulled the younger man, of no choice, into the bushes. There, his friend, front slathered with streaks of blood, squat gnawing ravenously on a putrid chuck of traitorous meat, his prey convulsing soundlessly as it was devoured. He looked toward the stunned silhouette with an uncanny hopefulness, until it pulled out a gun and caught him in the temple. The corpse stilled, Zero yanked Kaname off it, the direful pureblood further losing himself as a dum-dum was loaded into the gun. He fired it with a hardened, but disgusted look on his face, the brunette beside him coming into a stunned reverie at the sound and spray. He looked toward his companion in childish awe as the red faded from his eyes and his mind fulfilled itself. Again, he was sober.

 

Collecting the pureblood from the ground, the hunter began the brisk walk to camp, but paused in-step to open his pouch. From it, he retrieved a small shell, the façade of an almond hiding explosive intent. Turning around, he pitched it at the corpse and grabbed his dazed companion’s arm, yanking him close to his body and covering delicate ears with his muffs, grinding his palms against his as the brunette tried to keep his curious gaze focused on the small, flying shell. Without a word, Zero tucked the troublesome head into his coat, the shell hitting the body before he could recover and hide his ears from the sound.

 

Kaname heard it well through the hunting-grade muffs. He cried out in pain; the sound of a steel girder crashing to concrete echoing in his head, numbed fingertips shaking wildly. He felt Zero still, and hugged the other man’s body in his incalculable fear and dolour. And though he could not see the blaze in the sky, like a great orange nimbus encircling the chasm of Hell, the heat enwrapped their small bodies, their pride quaking piteously before the lambent coruscation, frames frail and tiny against the powerful inferno that was concentrated on such a small deed. Within seconds, it ended.

 

When the heat left his legs, Kaname unfurled the coat and threw the muffs to the ground staring at Zero frightfully, anger and inquiry growing rapidly. But the man only smiled, and patted his shoulder, “Sun Caps: leaves no bloody evidence, eh?” The very rocks had been incinerated. As the brunette heard the other man talk, though, he noticed the slurred words and uncertain stops, and so, tentatively, said as he stood behind him,

 

“I don’t suppose you have any more of those?” To which the light-haired man did not respond, only continued walking the path, somewhat uneasy on his feet.

 

Zero couldn’t hear.

 

-

 

A brief morning came and went, and Zero slept through it without disturbance. Kaname watched the man as he slept, unwilling to sleep and distressed by the fact that he couldn’t wake his companion to talk about it. His body was much cooler now, so he’d brought in their portable heater to keep the hunter warm through the dawn. Still, he couldn’t bear much more than his thermal underwear. The heat inside of him and the caloric halo of the blast had almost made him faint, and no matter how much he’d wanted to pry his friend about why he’d done such a thing, there was only one way to ask, and God knew the hunter would distrust him for the rest of their lives if it came to that. Not that the man held him in high regard in the first place, but what they had worked well enough, and being able to stand each other when sober was a good, far cry from the short tempers of their youth.

 

“You should have slept,” the younger said as he woke up, turning onto his belly so he could curl further into the warmth. Kaname looked at him softly, and pushed the heater a little closer,

 

“Sleep a little longer. I’ll be fine.” Zero continued rearranging the sleeping bag until he had a large pile around him, then scrutinised it before flipping it over and getting up. The pureblood looked after him worriedly as the man stumbled from their tent, feet black with grime from running barefoot in the night. Whatever he could gather from his dishevelled appearance betrayed the depth of his condition: whenever he turned his head, a painful swishing sounded off in his ear drums, and sleeping had been absolute Hell. The hunter knew his companion had probably figured it out, but retaining a sense of casualness and normality was essential and, for the most part, tantamount to making them feel just a little more civil, especially since he could practically draw a picture in the mire of blood lining the threshold of the pavilion. Not only that, but he could see the sticky tendrils woven throughout Kaname’s hair, growing nauseated by the thickness of the congealed clumps.

 

Face quite pale, he turned to their fire pit, searching through the ashes for leftover coals. Grunting when he found none, he took an all-too-precious match from their kit, and lit a pile of twigs for cooking their breakfast. Or, at least, _his_ breakfast. He didn’t know how filling a human shoulder could be, but it was in consideration of their delicate balance that he did not ask, and just brought out an extra cup. What disturbed him the most was, although the gunk had meticulously been cleaned from his teeth, the rotten smell of bad meat still plaguing the brunette’s gentle breaths, making it a Herculean task to be near him for more than a few moments.

 

“If you want coffee, it’ll be ready in a moment.” He said as his partner lifted the flap. The heavy smell grew stronger and he grimaced from its acrimonious presence. As the man sat down in front of him, a hand motioned up to a serious face, and instantly, his stomach sank.

 

“You shouldn’t be out here if you can’t hear.” The pureblood slowly mouthed. Zero immediately scowled, almost throwing the pot in his partner’s lap,

 

“I can see and smell fine. And don’t talk so slowly: I’ve been reading lips for years. Give me some fucking credit already.” Kaname looked put out, but continued staring at the other man, willing him to look up. He did so sluggishly, not quite fighting it, but doing so for effect, all the while glaring at the other man as fearsomely as he dared. “Don’t fuck with me. I can manage myself. When we get back, I’ll go to a clinic or something. We’re done with this Hellhole, aren’t we?” Though gritting his teeth against the hunter’s strong attitude, Kaname nodded, standing up to cool off. The taste of rancid flesh was getting to him, but there wasn’t good drinking water until the town. So, in rebellion against something he wasn’t sure, he grabbed the pot of boiling water and poured it into his mouth, letting it burn off the taste while his friend screamed at him. He spit it out with a challenging glance at the blisteringly angry hunter, wiping foul residue from the side of his mouth. Almost surprised when the man simply cursed and reset the pot, he thought for a moment that loss of hearing had made him docile, but jumped and shouted out when the water lapped at his skin in a large cascade. It scalded, then healed, and he looked up from his ruined clothing to find a reproachful glower and the bent handle of a Sierra kettle. Throwing it to the ground, Zero stormed into the tent to pack up while the pureblood stood outside, sensitive lap still steaming painfully hot.

 

-

 

Their overstated return echoed throughout the vampire and hunter communities, the tiresome questions inconveniently coinciding with their after-trip exhaustion and rejuvenated apathy for most life. The man they’d hunted had been a slimy congressman intent on withholding certain rites in the conference room, a heavy bundle of bills flashed at everyone who could dispose of those who could oppose him. He lacked Ichiou’s class and Rido’s hands-on style, so in the end, it was an easy kill, lacking the flair they’d almost desired in having rid themselves of the other two so spectacularly. Not to say the bloodlust began then, of course.

 

“So how was Alaska?” Yuki asked them as she poured tea. Lessons from Ruka had given her the discreet edge of a sophisticated woman, and while she was always ready for small talk, she did mean to get to the point. Zero got up after eyeing the tray of sweets on the sideboard, Kaname watching the back of his white shirt as it rumpled and twisted.

 

“It was beautiful. I do wish we’d had more time to enjoy it before things got hectic, though.” The hunter picked through the pastries at the bottom, licking powdered sugar from his fingers as it complicated his fussy quest.

 

“Do tell,” she said, following her husband’s eyes and aiming the question at their friend. Zero turned around and they looked back at the table, gentle smiles deceiving the fact that his face was absolutely sheathed in white.

 

“Well, we camped out on the tundra for a night or two. Not much to do in Deadhorse; but we did find a good place to take you sometime. A nice little bluff a bit south.” He sat down next to Kaname, carrying a small plate holding two éclairs. Yuki’s eyes shone in predilection, practically devouring them already, and her beloved husband pushed the plate toward her, taking one after. Her violet summer dress moved in pretty waves as she crossed her legs, her male counterpart closing his eyes in relish, the saccharine taste imperative to his recovery from dried fish and, of all things, _vegetables_. He positively lost himself.

 

“It must be beautiful in winter, but I would like to see it in the summer, perhaps early, so the flowers will come out. Were there many meadows up there, I wonder?” Zero watched her intently, smiling and grabbing another sweet in excited zeal.

 

“I spied some dead heads and upturned roots, but there won’t be any foxglove like the fields in Washington.” The mountain trip; five days up in a pass because of a broken axel and a rather irritable pureblood insulted by another one of the hunter’s off-hand comments. Although the moonshine probably hadn’t helped him much in deciding whether or not it was safe to start joking about how _‘Shiki and his boyfriend fooled you pretty damn well for a while, didn’t they?’_   Yuki nodded, cheered and somewhat frightened by her husband’s almost orgasmic enjoyment of the treats. A champagne bottle rested on the sideboard, and she went to get it to join in with the tea. And they might even be responsible adults, this time.

 

“So tell me,” she said as she again poured their drinks, “was it terribly cold up there, or were you shearing your clothes on the lawn for laughs?” Silly boys. Still unused to abrupt changes in temperature. Not at all like the conveniences of being a more sensitive and lax _female_. Silence answered her, so she asked again, having turned around to spy on their boyish adoration of the sweets to see the back of Zero’s head. He didn’t answer her, “Zero? Is something wrong?” Still, he was quiet. Kaname smacked his lips on the last bite. Yuki shushed him, and he looked over at his friend, who snapped his head back at them as if he’d been bitten by a snake,

 

“I’m fine. Simply tired. I’ll go doze in the guest room and see if I can’t be better off in the morning.” Yuki, politely, wished him a good rest. Kaname got up to follow, but as he began to stand, her eyes, focused on her tea, glimmered over the rim of her cup. They told him to sit down and open up, so he sat, and she waited. The porcelain clicked as the hunter’s boots clacked at the end of the runner carpet, beyond the hall.

 

“What happened?” She asked straightforwardly, spooning sugar cubes into her cup,

 

“Nothing bad, dear. Just a few miscalculations in how much ammunition was required.” Her eyes, so like his, imbued with a deep red, gazed upon him with onerous requirement: unavoidably, she demanded the damned truth. “He just got knocked back by a bit of a blast. His head was ringing the whole trip back, and he wouldn’t shut up about it. Other than acting spacey and short, he’s fine.” He got up again, and this time, she let him leave, not bothering to watch as his nervous fingers fumbled the door close.

 

Instantly, he was at the hunter’s unofficial room. Having the door open, he caught the man unaware, limp on the couch. The sagging flesh dripping from his eye sockets carried the message of his sleeplessness and jading vexation. His skin was papery, body seizing when he saw Kaname standing where the door had before been closed.

 

“What do you want?” He slurred, no longer required to meticulously form words; he’d focused too much in trying to have Yuki think he was fine. God knew she’d find out soon.

 

“We need to get you to a doctor. At the very least, allow someone to look at your ears—”

 

“Fuck off,” Zero spat, slack form jostling as he thrust his boots on the table. Kaname’s face grew hard at his insolence,

 

“Through thick and thin I’ve dealt with this attitude, but **you need help**. I’m not going to stand by while you trip over your own two feet trying to spite the world like some obnoxious four year-old.” Zero read his lips, mouth slowly turning into an acidic grimace before he looked toward the window, ignoring the fuming pureblood. Then, his head snapped back, and he growled as the man looked down at him like some scolding teacher, “Don’t look away. If you can’t hear me, I’m at least going to require that you look at me.”

 

“Why can’t you just leave? I’m not your _responsibility_ anymore, Kuran.” Kaname looked affronted, scowling something fearsome as Zero continued, watching the man stand up and walk over to a night stand to rifle through the drawers, “As I remember, you once called me a ‘liability’. So, before I put more of a damper on your oh-so- **glorious** parade, please,” he tossed a gun into the brunette’s hands, looking at him tiredly, but confidently, “ **shoot me**.” Immediately, he dropped the gun, the barrel clanging on the hardwood. His skin was burnt where the metal had touched him, and Zero leaned back against the footboard of his bed, hands supporting him, nails tapping on the wood unaffectedly. Ripping a handkerchief from his vest pocket, the brunette wiped the seared flesh from his palms as it grew anew.

 

“You’re a fucking spoilt child and you disgust me,” Zero clicked his tongue,

 

“Oh, and we were on such good terms,” he sighed dramatically. Kaname’s glare lost no part of its ferocity, but he aimed it at his foul-smelling kerchief, stuffing it back into his pocket with distaste.

 

“Lose the tone and maybe I’ll consider being nicer.”

 

“A pity I can’t hear myself. Whatever I’m saying is having quite the effect on you.” His impassive look was mischievously punching at the pureblood’s buttons, and while the brunette found himself terribly guilty for having caused the man’s deafness, what was being said indefinitely dried up his unwilling compassion.

 

The stalemate they were at was an allusion to their incompatibility: whatever words Kaname might’ve scrounged up to placate the rogue hunter would be squashed, and any scruples he’d had before that moment would evaporate into an anger that, naturally, could only be matched by this _little boy_.

 

“I don’t feel like dragging you anywhere tonight, so after the sun rises, you and I are heading to a clinic to get you checked out.”

 

“Save it, lover boy: I can handle myself. When something important comes up, I’ll go. You should spend some time with your beloved little homemaker. Must be quite proud that you’ve finally locked her up all to yourself?” He didn’t really finish his sentence, but that was pretty much what he was getting at. In the middle of his droll observation of his counterpart’s home life, the man had him shoved to the bed, the foot board breaking in two as his body burst through it. His head cracked through the wallpaper and plaster, running painfully into some plasterboard. Without delay, Kaname was atop him. Zero kicked him soundly in the gut, head still reeling when he felt his stomach almost rip in two as the pureblood punched it. He sat up quickly, a great pain thrumming in his belly as he sucker-punched the man, knocking him onto the floor. The scorching feeling in his abdomen grew, and he nearly vomited, it hurt so much. Their huffing filled the room, and Kaname got up, the nasty bruise on his face having conveniently faded, hiding his companion’s _extremely_ painful strength.

 

“This isn’t going to get us anywhere unless I fight unfairly,” the brunette said with a puff, calming down much more quickly,

 

“Same here. You want a drink?” Apparently, they’d just needed to get rid of some testosterone. The minds of males would forever confuse and sometimes disgust Yuki, whose head had already been described as an artefact of strange origin by both men. Kaname remained on the floor when Zero came over, two glasses of whiskey in his hands,

 

“Bit of a hard nightcap, isn’t it?” he drawled, the right side of his mouth still aching violently. Having anti-vampire weapons touch naked flesh wasn’t his idea of a good time, though little was to be said of his rambunctious partner in a pacifistic, if not frightened frame of mind. He downed it with difficulty, finding opening his mouth somewhat of a chore, then reminded himself that, if he wanted to have the pain away, he would have to swallow some home analgesics. But, on the other side of the room, Zero was finding hard liquor did not mix well with an ‘upset’ stomach. He placed his glass gingerly on the coffee table, stunned as Kaname held his own in the air, demanding more in somewhat of a drunken way.

 

“If you’re so eager to get plastered, go to your own room. I’m not about to have some drunk pureblood sprawled in mine.”

 

“Too late.” The brunette said disinterestedly, wiggling the glass childishly. The hunter snatched it with a growl and put it next to his, which was more or less untouched. Kaname covered his eyes from the rough light of the ceiling lamp, the soft fabric of his white shirt cooling his heated face. “That feels so good,” he whispered into his arm, knowing selfishly that the other man could not hear him. And, strangely enough, he took pleasure in that: after having suffered weeks alone with this tempestuous person; having a little something over him was proving to be quite the treat, although he knew his complaints shook before the dissenting young male’s own lamentations. They took more offence from each other than any villain they’d known, through the years finding necessary the bitter contention that had grown so lavishly between them. It had made them feel alive, and the competitions of their youth failed to give them even the slightest pleasures of their newfound taste for action and, above all, decimation. Nothing had fed their heinous love of brutality greater than the sight of freshly-made carrion. Disputes over who was more deserving of delivering the brands and blows had occurred often. And, if you’ve ever seen _Saving Private Ryan_ , you’ll see their resplendent eyes glowing on dirty faces as they handle dog tags as poker cards. No joy was more majestic and sublime than that which came from their work, and in this, nightly, they would rejoice.

 

Zero flopped down on his lounger, the bed coated with dust and wood shards. If worse came to worst, he would toss the drunk on that, and see how he fared in the evening. Even if there was an extra sofa staring at him as he laid down, he most unequivocally did not want the empty view to be poisoned by _that man’s_ face, which, dozing, appeared callow and pale as a young child.

 

“I wouldn’t mind some water,” the corpse droned from the corner. His slow-going mind chastised him for insensitively speaking to nothing but his sleeve, but as he got up to finalise his demand, he found the hunter sleeping on the lounger, body tangled as it tried to fit on the short thing. And Kaname didn’t know why, but the peaceful sight made him frown and feel quite strange. To see such a dangerous man sleeping so soundly was an odd, if not sickening sight. That face, which was habitually covered in blood or cheap lipstick, so gentle and unimposing in its vulnerability, was a marvellously rare sight, and as he caught himself staring in his stupor, the brunette slowly came to the realisation that the other man had probably felt the same way. Perhaps even Yuki, when she looked upon her ‘kind’ husband’s face, knew of the tragedies he had so apathetically witnessed, and more often than not carried out.

 

He departed with a stumble, which Zero couldn’t hear.

-

Undoubtedly, he was going to have to visit the clinic. It was all a matter of hiding just when he did and where he went. For reasons he couldn’t quite figure, he just didn’t want Kaname interfering, this time. It seemed a reasonable request, but try telling that to the hand pounding on your locked bedroom door at seven in the morning, after what could be called the second worst night of sleep you’d ever had.

 

Having the door unlock, Kaname entered the room without looking up from his gloves, pulling them on and pulling from them specks of lint until they were an immaculate London grey.

 

“You need to get up. I don’t like being awake at this hour any more than you do, but the clinic’s just opened, and I want to get there before the rush.” Zero drew the sheets over his head, hiding from the window as the sunglass-clad pureblood pulled back the curtains, “Get up, Zero.” He said, squinting through the light and turning back to the bed. When the hunter pulled the thin blankets tighter around himself, murmuring a sleepy

 

“ _Fuck off,_ ” the brunette twitched, then sprung into action, lifting clothes and shoes from drawers and closets to assemble at his friend’s bedside. Taking no time, he ripped the sheets from the tightly-curled body, comfortable enough with his partner’s intriguing nudity to not cringe when the several gashes jumped out at him. Trying to ignore the naked beast clutching a pair of cotton socks, he busied himself with which suspenders he would have the man wear. A great crash echoed through the room, and he turned around to see a half-conscious twenty year-old groping a nightstand like a new blind man does a door handle.

 

“Piece of work,” he muttered angrily as he readjusted his readying friend, cringing when the man leaned on him in his birthday suit. Tentatively, a message echoed in the younger’s mind,

 

“ _You’re doing this on purpose,_ aren’t _you_?” Slipping an arm from man’s shoulder to pull on some underwear, Zero smirked slyly, gunk crackling lowly from the corners of his eyes as they gradually wrinkled. Hands just about to encircle the man’s throat, Kaname restrained himself, still feeling the disgustingly sensuous drag of the other male’s thigh against his hip. Almost loathe in giving the hunter any sense of privacy or comfort, he kept inside his head the theoretic action of his smacking the other man in a place that would count, or at least sting for a few minutes. Fantasizing about such things had become a hobby which he regularly indulged in, and did not evaporate the thin spray of social lubricant over their faulty relationship.

 

“ _How drunk did you get last night?_ ”

 

“I slept.”

 

He asked the dressing man, causally rearranging the pillows on the couch so Yuki wouldn’t get in a tizzy, because the smell of alcohol saturated the pillows and poisoned their threads, making them unbearably tempting as wanton advertisements for drunken fun. And, as a man with the blood of a drinker, Kaname could hold his weight and several others. If it hadn’t been for his father and Ichiou, he might not have stood for the taste of whiskey until, in any case, a despairingly more mature later age. Behind him, Zero had finished dressing, and had walked toward the mirror,

 

“How much time do I have before we get our ride?” He asked, getting out his razor for a cursory shave. The brunette drawled with diminishing patience,

 

“I’m driving.” Which his friend saw in the mirror and, with a pause, turned around to comment, shaving cream covering his five-o’-clock shadow,

 

“Uh-huh. And how much did _you_ drink last night?” Very close to grumbling, the pureblood waited for his partner to turn around before walking out of view to crack or mutilate something. When the hunter had wiped his face and gotten his coat, they left the house for the pristine Bentley sitting in the driveway. The driver bowed to them and opened the doors as Kaname slid on his sunglasses, their perfect round blackness mirroring the road and the disserving expression on the younger male’s face. Then, they shuffled in, and the doors were closed.

 

Cool air pumped in from the console, the weather conflicting with the brunette’s choice in clothes. Though Zero enjoyed looking mildly professional on, at most, formal occasions, he was chagrined by the ridiculously upscale rags his friends had bought him: suspenders should not cost a man four hundred dollars, cheaply, nor should a shirt be any more than two hundred, let alone two thousand. He was aggravated by the fact that they ere too comfortable to give up, and so accepted them as calmly as he could, abominating the idea that he might have succumbed to whatever seductions their ludicrous fortune had set before him. And with the creep sitting next to him, dressed up like some Romanian hit-man, he was less than propitiated.

 

“Who takes a fucking _Bentley_ to a check-up?” He whispered to the window, not caring in the slightest if his irked friend heard him.

 

“ _Mind your tongue; I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m not about to take another of your tantrums well._ ” Truth be told, Yuki’d had a Hell of a time extracting him from their bedroom floor when she’d woken and found him, passed out at the foot of _her_ side. Picking him up, she’d tried to put him back in bed around five, but he rose on his own and slurred something they couldn’t understand. Sniffing him, she’d sent him out in the hall. Ironic that the princess who owned a bloody winery would have to excommunicate her husband from her bed after he’d had ‘only a few sips’ of whiskey. Having blacked out long before the couple’s tiff, Zero had no idea what had been said, but without a doubt, he knew that Kaname had brought him up, and couldn’t help but fear what the man had said of their travels. For, if he had divulged to his wife the intimacies and workings of their dynamic, the hunter was unsure she would be able to accept it; every word her husband spewed about peace and protection would seem a cover for a morbid cause glamorised only by the flair and inarguable perfection in which they succeeded each hit. Her head wasn’t little anymore, and she know what went down on the bloody front lines, but to know in detail their very primitive inhibitions and primal lusts would be an iron cross on her conscience, and God knew she could shoulder as much guilt as either one of them in her blossomed maturity.

 

They pulled up to a square, grey building, its front façade slashed with thin strips of windows that spoke of the darkness inside.

 

“It looks like a dentist’s.” Zero remarked as he shut the car door. Kaname touched the rim of his glasses, pulling them down to look at the well-kept, but less than stylish joint,

 

“Dentists are more prone to suicide than any other doctor, you know.” He said when the fidgeting hunter looked up. Then, pulling up the dark glass, he began walking toward the institution with a determined, prideful gait, the other walking with wider steps and frustrated hands, revealing his distaste for the grim-looking establishment.

 

“ _Hurry up or you’ll be stuck in there for longer_.” Twitching, Zero glared at Kaname, who stared straight ahead with an unknown expression. Then, grimacing in his rancorous, introverted tantrum, he slammed his hand on the elevator button, and waited for the contraption to reach them. It flickered for a moment, at last staying on as some bell rung out each passed floor, the tiny vibrations travelling up his fingers and lodging in his brain. As he looked around, distracting himself from his boredom and the otherwise motionless pureblood standing some feet from him, he found there was little decorating the ground floor lobby. A few dingy couches were packed tightly in the southeast corner, a painfully dreary painting invoking a lacklustre lifelessness with its depiction of some scrubby, jagged moor.

 

The vibrations stopped abruptly, his pores aching as he shook his fingers of the constant, inconsiderable buzz. Kaname stepped into the bare elevator, a single light struggling to illuminate his piqued flesh, casting down upon his face as if they were stuck in some bad horror movie. As Zero entered, he saw to his right a balding, Lilliputian man. In a wheezing, toilsome voice, he spoke, looking ahead of himself as the doors patiently stayed open.

 

“I see Mr. Kuran has come in for a check-up?”

 

“Not until the wife demands it.” The round little man checked his fingernails,

 

“So I am to be concerned about this young man?” Zero felt Kaname’s aura constrict, and then loosen wantonly in a stressed attempt at restraint.

 

“Room 908, please.” The brunette said in a voice much deeper than usual. The little man sniffed, tapping a long blank plaque on the wall,

 

“As you wish.”

 

When they exited the elevator, they found themselves in another spacious room, this time decorated in a theme of beiges and burgundy. A long line of chairs sat against the far wall in military perfection, before them a few small coffee tables coated with, not outdated magazines, but small vases, some with flowers, others barren. To the right of the wall was a single door, plain and beige as the floor, sporting an iron knob and a few nasty scratches at the very bottom. Kaname tugged on the hunter’s arm to get him moving,

 

“ _You don’t have any friends here. I don’t want to stay too long_.” Zero looked up at the receptionist’s desk, a slim redheaded woman sitting behind it. She looked up at him, specifically, scrutinising him emotionlessly as Kaname handed her a small slip, to which she turned her eagle-like attentions.

 

“There’s a forty-second wait. Once you’re in, they’ll give you a green form to fill out while he goes into the office,” she looked pointedly at the silver-haired man, grey eyes distrustful and unwavering, “please wait here until then.” The pureblood seemed strained, and looked up at the clock, which seemed to move incredibly slowly, until Zero noticed it didn’t appear to be moving at all.

 

“What does she mean, ‘there’s a forty-second wait’?” He asked in annoyed confusion. Kaname took off his gloves in the well-heated room, dabbing at his forehead hastily and infliction,

 

“ _This is a hospital for vampires. It runs on the lifespan of nobles. She really means about forty-five minutes._ ” Feeling the growl in his head, the hunter sat back with a bit of a headache while Kaname occupied himself with routinely crushing his handkerchief.

 

Almost an hour later, the door clicked and he stood up, gripping his companion’s wrist dolorously tightly, and pulled him briskly into what was nothing more than a small, sterile waiting room. Mint paint coated the walls, spindly wires seeping from the ceiling, from which hung large iron cylinders: the light bulbs that might be inside having been removed what seemed like ages before. The rusting metal was still in suspension, only occasionally creaking as if to assert its existence, casting long, thin shadows on the few metal chairs on the right wall. Beyond them were several white doors, all with brass knobs, and all cleaned so as to make them sparkle in the morning light.

 

A black-haired orderly bowed to them in respect, then beckoned Zero into a room whilst asking Kaname, respectfully, to come with him.

 

“Computers these days are so unreliable, so I’m afraid all forms must be filled out manually.” Walking down a tiny corridor, he led the pureblood to a secluded alcove, secure in its privacy, and sat him down at a small desk where some papers were neatly collected in the centre. “By the time you are done, Mr. Kiriyu should be out and fine.” The brunette muttered a ‘thank you’, and with that, the smaller man left.

 

The papers were strange; on each of them, the only question was ‘Patient’s Name’ and, while he might have admitted to needing help, after having waved off the orderly, he felt stupid to ask. So, dutifully, he printed Zero’s name in the box, and moved to the next paper. But as he relieved the pile of the previous one, he looked down at it to find another box, inked neatly below the name he’d written, showing ‘Age’. Slowing down, he replaced the paper, and set to filling in the empty box. After that, ‘Sex’ appeared beneath his hand, and he wrote a curvy ‘M’ square in the centre.

 

At this pace, each box appeared and was filled in succession, until it came to a few questions he was less than comfortable answering: ‘Has the patient engaged in sexual intercourse within the past three months?’ Remembering discontentedly a night about a month ago, upon which he had discovered reddish, waxen smears on his partner’s white shirt, he hastily put a ‘yes’ in the box, and waited for the next. There was a pause, as if the paper had to rethink the direction of its questions. The somewhat skittish Kaname fidgeted in his seat, glancing at the third-story window beside him as if to check for peeping toms. When he looked down again, in plain black letters stood the monolithic phrase, ‘Preference’. Genuinely, he did not know how do answer, and so squirmed again, scooting his chair in closer to the desk until the girth of his coat scratched against the metallic surface of the old desk. The thing creaked impatiently, as if saying, “Well? Get on with it,”

 

So, as discreetly and naturally as he could, he scrawled in the square a hard ‘M/F’, and removed his coat with the conspicuous shuffle of grey wool.

 

-

 

They were in Reno, in a small, indistinguishable motel on some side street not far from the highway. The edges of the windows had a thick, opaque layer of greenish grime, and the porcelain bowl of the toilet was irreparably cracked. Zero was sitting on the side of his bed, elbows on his knees as he stared through the empty space below Kaname’s cot. The thin mattresses creaked aloud easily, they found, and the scanty brass bed posts rattled from loose, rusted screws. Kaname sat in the tall shower, arms, too, on his knees, head bent down in little more than evasive reverie. Their bodies ached and the thick rain battering the windows caused their bones to whine and scrape in the discomforting silence. The brunette shifted and the hunter’s ears peaked, head turning toward the door almost behind him. A soft head plummeted to loosely folded knees as clothes rumpled on dry tile,

 

 _Well, now what_?

 

-

 

He looked down as the next question emerged from the blue paper, ‘Class’.

 

-

 

The bedroom was a mess: the coffee table had been chucked through the window, and the splintered wood had crashed into a courtyard below. The mattress was ripped to shreds, springs piercing feathers, embedded in the wall. The door kicked down, the room was silent but for a few grunts as Kaname struggled to hold the hunter down, several bullets pushing from his flesh in slow ejaculation. The younger grunted as he whispered to him, the red fire in his eyes corroding the luminescent amethyst. Words thrummed through his body with the force of some degenerating power as burgundy eyes glared through the blaze. Claws out, he ripped a white-clothed arms and scarred hands, eager with wet lips as bloody tissue sprayed across his face in long, false gashes. The brunette closed his eyes, turning his hands down and wincing as he heard wrists crack backward, a dismembered howl ripping through a tattooed throat. He didn’t face the hostile man beneath him, hiding behind his growing hair and breathing as evenly as he could as skin practically dripped from his muscle, through the burst veins staining silvered, slivered bone.

 

Regrettably, he had known what he was doing, and choked on the resolve that bubbled from his gut in a steady loss of confidence and self-righteousness as he tortured himself for his taunts and misgivings. Provoking something like this was far less than his appraised quality of character, and the liquid fear coating Zero’s squirming, animalistic chest streamed obdurately from his fractured jaw, a listless lag proving through the bloody foam on what was left of his lips that his jaw had been broken in their primal tussle. When the body had stilled, he looked up to find a heaving chest and the dangerous smile of a demon hiding in a beautiful boy, and choked when, through the reddish haze, a vibrant spring of purple brewed mockingly, aerated with those dastardly crimson dots until they faded and he found himself too drawn in to keep those shattered wrists down any longer. He struggled again as the beast fought for his mouth, and touched down on the chewed flesh with a triumphant, ghastly grin, as always, savouring the disgusted, frightful cries of the man of whom they had dominated most easily.

 

-

 

When he finished the papers, he leaned back in the chair, staring up at the pastel ceiling. The orderly, as if acting on instinct, came instantly and collected the papers with glowing interest, scanning the simple, short answers as if they had been cut from the brain of the greatest man on earth and, in a sense, they might have been. Though, certainly, he was not the most fearsome.

 

Zero emerged some minutes later, knocking his palm at his head fervently, hearing that horrible swishing sound sway luxuriously in the shells of his ears. Kaname stood, and shook hands with the doctor, who told him the trauma was close to irreversibility, and that certain _hunter weapons_ , which he identified with an indignant turn of the chin, were tremendously hazardous, meant to be handled with delicacy and utmost respect. Jaw tight, the hunter quickly made for the door, brushing the stunned doctor’s shoulder. But then, his feet stopped, heels clicking as he turned around automatically, bowing low. His teeth grit in humiliation as the doctor looked down at him,

 

“You really should keep a tighter grip on your _allies_ , Sir. It is unthinkable that someone of his level might disrespect you.” Visibly pissed, Kaname tightened at the comment and had his friend released, who stumbled for a moment before planting himself on the ground. Slowly, he looked up, and though the doctor dismissed him with a sniff, he continued to glare, as if that helped an ex human in the presence of a Noble.

 

When they returned to the elevator, it opened for them instantaneously, and within stood the small man from before, hat and coat in arms. The brunette stopped for a moment, pupils shrinking at the sight of his tidy little form. Zero did not hesitate in entering, pulling his companion in alongside him as the man wobbled through a little trance. Then, with grumbling care and attention, he slung the grey coat over lax shoulders, and when the pureblood did awake from his daydream, he handed him his glasses and gloves, which were received with tentative hands. Pausing when he was fully dressed, the elder looked toward the man in the corner, who looked straight back at him with a tiny, toothy smile,

 

“It is a very busy day for doctors, to-day.” When the ride ended, he walked out, turning to the left as the two went to the right and the Bentley beyond the tinted glass entrance. Kaname sat down, and for a time did not speak, head slumped so as to appear unconscious. Unnerved by this trusting, uncharacteristic display, the hunter tucked safely against the window, face marred by streams of sunlight as they made their way through the heavy curtains a doctor needn’t prescribe.

 

-

 

It had been months since he’d seen Yuki, and his head ached from the bulges of the words he wished to say to her. He paced through the room, hands shaking behind his back as he caught sight of Zero’s whiskey flask. Grimacing, he looked down at his trembling fingers, seconds after, walking briskly to it and tipping it nearly to sixty degrees before releasing it from his puckered mouth and wiping the runoff from his chin. Shaking worse than before, he took another chug before screwing on the cap and tossing it on the other man’s bed, falling on it with his arm across his face. God, he missed her.

 

He missed the way her eyes would light up when he brought home a new pet, or how her hair would fall between his fingers like sand when she asked him to braid it. Now, he wondered with vague jealousy whether Zero missed the same. His look troubled, he stared at the door when the hunter emerged from the bathroom, brow up when the towel came from his face,

 

“What’re you staring at?” He sized the man up, from the dishevelled clothes to the brownish stains on an otherwise pristine collar. He groaned at the sight, “Oh, are you _serious_?!” He continued to wipe off his dripping hair, outside the window the clouds curdling the sky with a yellow, grey glow. “That shit isn’t cheap, Kuran! Why couldn’t you have walked down to the market, or the convenience store, at least?!” Snatching the bottle from the bed, where it rested next to a limp hand, he proceeded to check the contents. Unsatisfied, he grunted, then closed his eyes and poured the remainder down his throat with much more ease than the pureblood, taking the towel to swipe at his lips afterward. Glaring at the brunette, who stared at him almost curiously, and certainly drunkenly, from the bed, he said, “Well you’re a bloody mess.” He grappled the soiled collar and tried to yank the shirt from the wilted figure’s body, but fingers wrapped around his arm, and tugged him down beside the man, a move to which he responded with a sharp reprimand, and then a grumbling promise not to up and leave once he was set free as the insecure pureblood gazed worriedly at ceiling. The purse on those lips was disconcerting, and though obviously drunk, the man appeared to be in a deep focus. Tentatively, the hunter inched from the body so as to make some comfortable space between them, but the brunette dug under his back and held his hip in place with such speed, the younger might have feared the claws would come out next. Well, he _might_ have, but he was getting a little tipsy, too, now. Then, from the pursed lips came a halting, scratchy noise greatly unsuited to the dignified man’s usual liquid tone,

 

“D’you think Yuki misses us when we leave?” Zero squinted at the small stain on the ceiling he figured the other was gazing at in such boggling intrigue.

 

“That’s an odd way of putting it: I don’t think ‘friends’ are usually grouped in with ‘husbands’.” Kaname’s frown deepened as he turned his head to look at his roommate in a conspicuously concentrated look, the concern and envy etched in his encompassing, glossy pupils. He looked as painfully beautiful as his sister, and in his withered loneliness, the hunter couldn’t help but envision her face, placed so easily over the brunette male’s own. And in this, he found a surreal comfort, which enwrapped him with warmth that even his careful reason could not permeate. However strange, this feeling pulsed familiarly inside of him, and before he knew it, his hand was on the pureblood’s cheek, and he saw the man freeze, hearing a lowly humming heart skip a beat before those glass eyes looked to him in bizarre, lonely kinship, and he had little choice but to get up before his impulses took him too far from reality.

 

But again, his arm was caught, a pair of still-curious, dark eyes gazing up at him as the hand released him, dripping down his sleeve like molten chocolate. Oh God, he _smelled_ her, now; the sweet scents of lemon bars and cocoa seeping into the sheets as the brunette slowly rose from the bed, meeting his faraway eyes with a blur of expectant, brotherly excitement. Zero’s hand came to the side of his skull, and pulled gently at his hair, weaving it with unreal caresses. Kaname dipped his head, came up close to the other man, breaths heavy, and weighted with the warm scent of liquor. Forehead resting on a bare shoulder, he listened with utmost care to the quickening pace of his comrade’s heart, and decided in a haze that this way or that, the evening would be one of remembrance, and that the mere suggestion of the intimacy he had shared with his wife after those long months was far too much to bear.

 

The silver-haired man’s hand got clumsier as he went further into nostalgia, locked behind the soft flow of drying white sheets, a sunflower hat bobbing humbly between their coursing angelic masses. He remembered picking her up on autumn days and tossing her in leaf piles, and felt at his back the gush of the crisp dead foliage, made malleable by a thick barrier of canvas bags. At his collarbone was the lick of a dog he’d known had died, but he gripped its broad shoulders all the same, and pulled it closer with a dazed look, the image conjured before him that of an ill, exhausted, desperate man. A pressure spread over his body, and he saw that the man had laid upon him the length of his supple body, so much like hers, head resting on his breast, hands lost in the sheet.

 

“I don’t think I can take many more trips,” he said in that grainy little voice, feeling Zero’s cool arms come around his back. They were certainly well-muscled, and through their mass Kaname had a difficult time picturing his wife, though the thing he may have missed most was this _closeness_ with someone. Because after so many months of hunting and killing and hunting and killing and acting as some supreme, unidentifiable being, the intimacy which he had shared with his wife had begun to condense, like bad milk, into particular things only. In this position atop his friend, he struggled desperately to conjure her image, the futility of this act apparent as the masculine arms that constricted like an anaconda his, yet, boyish body.

 

With burgundy eyes, he lifted his head and set sight on the hunter, who looked dreamily down at him. He smiled crookedly, a fang prodding his lip whilst the other slipped past. And then the hand that firmly gripped his sides hauled him up the other man’s body, pupils tiny and incredibly focused as finger wrapped around his head and he was pulled into a somewhat sloppy, somewhat slow kiss. Unknowing of how to react, he just stopped moving for a second, feeling the alien motions of a large tongue in his mouth, finding it impossible to see his wife in this man. About to call the hunter on his moves, when their lips separated, he opened his mouth and tried to speak, only to feel the sudden jerk as a firm body lifted him up, rubbing against him in a strange fashion. Stalling again, he was shocked to feel those large hands quickly work on his shirt, kissing his neck distractedly, toiling as fast as his bloody hands could as he felt her image leave him. This moment of shock and dreaming deepened as the brunette felt the shirt unravel at last, a puff of surprise pressed from his chest when the hunter fell upon him. Even though the body atop him was large, heavy, and firm, it was warm, and he closed his eyes as the man burrowed into his hair, fumbling with a thick buckle.

 

Generally, the clinking would have woken the pureblood, or at least stirred the vacuous space in which his scruples might have been. He lifted his hips dazedly, wrapping his arms around a straining neck and thumbing the grim tattoo at its side. The belt flew from his hips in Zero’s frustration, making an angry clang on the hardwood. His back arched and his head folded deep into the sheet as his slacks flew off next, the silver-haired man grunting in primeval triumph. Kaname slurred something he couldn’t understand, maybe a refusal, maybe just a groan, as he felt his body curl the other way, hips coming off the bed to meet tense thighs. Looking blearily through whatever was clouding his eyes, he met the hunter with a half-grimace, apprehensive as he felt a hand pull him apart, prying with apart with all five fingers the older male’s pale buttocks, and leaning back so as to survey the ‘prize’. If anything were to end, the moment of truth had already passed, and the most Kaname could now do to remove the other man would be hurtful, and while he was not at all opposed to that, he loathed incredibly the detestable possibility of fracturing the illusion he had set up. A mask for reality so powerful, it was something he could use to distract himself from any horror, even if, when he first started using it, he felt indescribably guilty for having ‘tainted’ the few precious memories of his wife. Now, it was beginning to become a second language to the devastation he caused, or rather, the realisation that his actions were no better than those who hunted his kind, or worse, that of Zero’s bloody stigma. Truthfully, it might be said that he feared tainting his pride more than anything, although he would die for Yuki.

 

Zero was tender. With women. He was adoring and flexible, and even when he paid them; he didn’t force them into anything demeaning. But he knew very well that men could take much, much more, and having not had as much to drink as his friend, was still highly aware of the fact that Kaname was indeed _male_ , and not the beauty he’d painted over that anxious face. So, without much warning, he pried a little further, very concentrated, and very mechanical, a stern look on his face as he focused, lips hard against his teeth as he scowled,

 

_To have it too tight won’t do…_

 

Not that he cared much if the bastard couldn’t walk for a few seconds; he just didn’t want to get certain parts of him chewed off in the process of making it so. So he flexed his fingers and reached in, delighting in a way he knew was perversely intimate for their relationship the fact that the brunette’s arms had crept over his eyes, a thin mouth showing teeth, opening wide as it dared. Until the man who would claim him couldn’t take the once-subtle, but still oblivious seductions the pureblood was using against him, and threw apart the legs clenching him with such force that Kaname cried out. The sound flocculated as he began to fuck the whiny little cunt, growing steadily from a growling bass to halting, tenor gasps, and then stilling in perhaps pain, perhaps confusion, as Zero changed courses and shifted positions. They had an unmitigated desire to keep quiet, though once every few thrusts came the onslaught of the threatening climax, a moment in which Kaname would cover his mouth with his arm, biting the nearly hairless flesh so as to gulp down his volume. And, as he was fucked, he realised that he liked it very much, and when his friend came on his stomach, he remembered he shouldn’t.

 

The hunter didn’t give him much room on the bed, so as he got up, yet unfulfilled, to get his clothes, a silver-haired head groaned into the pillow as its body stretched out, the pureblood sticky and stuck in fearsome deliberation. He opened the door to the bathroom and, stalling for a moment, stepped in, closed it, and got in the shower, a little stunned to do anything but turn on the knob, whose correlating flow managed to rouse the sleepy hunter. As the man slowly rose, he slipped on some clothing, sparse on the dilapidated scantling, and sat on the bed with a grim expression. By then, the shower had turned off, and the other male was doing, practically and shockingly, the same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I did warn you.


End file.
